“We can only glimpse our future reflected in our past”

Visionary fiction for the just transition

Generations from today, a group of young activists sends a letter to a historian of the 21st century, hoping that she will be able to settle an argument about tactics. The historian’s response explores the hidden history of 21st-century struggles, the victories gained, the hard-won solutions, and the work still remaining.

Her letter exhorts the young activists to think in the long term, to think beyond the superficial, and gives us a glimpse of what life is like in the 22nd century – after a just transition.

Dear friends and comrades,

I was both pleased and surprised to receive your letter. I’m always happy to correspond with friends of the struggle. But, as a historian, it’s rare that I’m asked for counsel. Most people would rather not unearth and inspect the appalling events of the past hundred years. They say that what’s dangerous should stay buried. There are few who would scavenge the ashes for advice.

But there is much to learn from that difficult, complicated, uproarious century…

 

Read the rest at Briarpatch Magazine.

 

Image by Lauren Crazybull.